Saffronart Evening Sale

Hugo Weihe’s presence in Saffronart after leaving Christies, spells excellence and esteem and a fine hand at doing things with a touch of class. Saffronart’s catalogue is a good measure of this desire and strength as it gets ready for an evening sale in a nation that is troubles by recession and galleries struggling to survive, amidst a lack of flowing money and buyers for contemporary art.

To commemorate its 15th anniversary, Saffronart brings together a momentous auction of Modern and Contemporary Indian Art in Evening Sale. Since 2000, the auction house has initiated a paradigm shift in the Indian art market, having sold over 20,000 works of art and played an integral role in the art market’s growth. With its live auction to be held at The Oberoi in New Delhi, Saffronart offers a carefully curated selection of works that trace their provenances to some of the most illustrious collections in the world.

Hugo had stated in an interview, “Auction houses have seen successful sales of works by younger artists as well, such as Subodh Gupta, Jitish Kallat, Atul and Anju Dodiya, TV Santosh and Ravinder Reddy, to name just a few. The broader and more widely known this market becomes, the more it will open up to also include artists who have recently emerged. The auction market as a secondary market helps to establish a market consensus over time and affirm an artist’s reputation.”

FN Souza’s Man and Woman Laughing

Of the 75 works that will go under the hammer, September 10, 2015 buyers can speculate from a range of Bombay Progressives, and contemporaries such as Subodh Gupta, and Thukral and Tagra. Weihe’s attention, however, is on FN Souza’s Man and Woman Laughing (1957), estimated at Rs 15 – 20 crores. This artwork brushes past MF Husain and Akbar Padamsee, to become the lead sale of the auction. “Look at Souza’s figures. These are wounded people, who are still laughing. Souza has not been given his fair share of recognition in the country,” says Weihe.

The Evening Sale is led by an iconic masterpiece work by the enfant terrible of Modern Indian Art, Francis Newton Souza. Estimated at Rs 15 – 20 crores, “Man and Woman Laughing” (1957) is formerly from the collection of Harold Kovner, Souza’s most important patron, and belongs to a particularly vital period in the artist’s career. Extraordinary in size and composition, it is a powerful testament to Souza’s characterization of the human condition, rendered brilliantly through his brushwork and pictorial imagery.

Layered, dynamic, brutally humanistic, the paintings of Francis Newton Souza reveal an artist who never stopped experimenting throughout his six-decade career, perpetually seeking new modes and languages of painterly expression. A founder of the inestimably important Progressive Artists’ Group in Mumbai, he wrote the group’s manifesto and was a crucial intellect in the group’s formation and articulation — as, indeed, he was for Modern Indian art on the whole. He holds an unshakable place among India’s most important and influential Modern painters.

Despite the vast sweep of painting styles encompassed by his oeuvre, Souza’s work is unified by an overt sensuality, sometimes violent, sometimes sexual, but devoted above all to the human body as a wild, fragile, noble and corruptible object. He is hardly the first Catholic-raised artist to fixate on the body. Nudes, sex and violence dominate even his most abstract work, but he rejected the notion he was too aggressive toward his subjects, particularly the women. “No artist goes knocking down things,” he said, “he is interested in one thing, and that is aesthetics, the science of beauty. And my whole life has been the quest for beauty. Beauty is the final nuance of nature. I am searching for that beauty. Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, but in the cultivated eye.”

Tyeb Mehta’s Standing Figure

Another treat to the tired eyes is Tyeb Mehta’s Standing Figure estimated at a whopping Rs 10 – 15 crores.

The catalogue states that Tyeb Mehta places his Standing Figure on a ground of ochre against subtle pastel shades, all contained within cleanly defined planes. He creates a composition that is neat and deceptively simple. The colours are secured within their boundaries and the lines define the contours and the semblance of a female form. The figure commands the viewer’s full attention, “In Tyeb’s painting, the figure is the bearer of all drama, momentum and crisis, a detonation against the ground it occupies and commands” (Ranjit Hoskote, Tyeb Mehta: Ideas Images Exchanges,Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2005, p. 4). The raised hand with double outlines hints at movement and suggests a sequence of events which might follow.

“It’s like Milan Kundera who shows us how everything we choose and value in life for its lightness soon reveals its true unbearable weight. I wanted to look at my subject with a different logic, a different perspective and with fresh methods of cognition and interpretation. That is what art is. You have to be rooted to the earth but also learn to fly with your imagination.”

KK Hebbar’s Prosperity

A rare beauty is the 1980 KK Hebbar’s Prosperity. Hebbar’s felicity with the contour is matched only by the grace of the figures that stand between a large fish. The unique visual language of Hebbar’s work stems from his deep grounding in the culture and traditional arts of Karnataka. His drawings and paintings typically focus on figures from village life, fisherfolk, Kathak dancers and folk musicians. Hebbar’s art training in Mysore, Bombay and Paris introduces a unique blend of western art technique into his choice of fundamentally rural, Indian subject matter. This works stands apart for its measure of simplicity and the the lucid nature of his colours in the medium of oils. The hallmark of this work is also its realistic Estimate a humble Rs 15 – 18 lakhs.

Among the contemporaries in the Evening Sale is G Ravinder Reddy’s nine foot-tall “Devi” (1998), estimated at Rs 2.75 – 3 crores. It once held a position of pride at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum in Washington DC, and was exhibited at six other international institutions between 1998 and 2008. The monumental head is a striking blend of tradition and kitsch, and one of the largest he ever created.

The Evening Sale by Subodh Gupta

Subodh Gupta is best known for his monumental installations using everyday objects like steel plates, stainless steel tiffins, and pots and pans. Taking a cue from the Dadaist doctrine, he transforms the ordinary object into high art, creating a conversation about urbanization and cultural memory. The Evening Sale features a large-scale photograph by the artist, highlighting his continued focus on shiny, stainless steel kitchen utensils-2005. A perfect study in still life.

Bharti Kher’s Smackdown vs Raw (2006) is estimated at Rs 80 lakhs – 1 crore ($123,080-153,850). “The bindi is not just a traditional symbol; it’s the third eye with which a woman sees the world,” said Bharti Kher, in a 2010 interview with the Times of India. Kher’s “Smackdown Vs Raw” (2006), which features in the Evening Sale, is a compelling composition consisting of a deliberate scattering of bindis in various sizes and numerous permutations on a reflective surface.

Mother and Child, Meera Mukherjee

Smiths Working Under a Tree, Meera Mukherjee

Important works by Jehangir Sabavala, Manjit Bawa, S H Raza, Sailoz Mukherjea, Meera Mukherjee and other leading Modernists also round up the sale. The auction will be held at The Oberoi in New Delhi on September 10, 2015, at 7.30 pm.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Author

Critic and Curator Uma Nair has been writing for the past 29 years on art and culture She has written as critic for Times of India and Economic Times. She believes that art is a progressive sojourn. And there are those who are taught and those who are self taught. She herself had learnt by looking at the best shows in Washington D.C. and New York. And life is about learning and growing...

Critic and Curator Uma Nair has been writing for the past 29 years on art and culture She has written as critic for Times of India and Economic Times. She b. . .

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Author

Critic and Curator Uma Nair has been writing for the past 29 years on art and culture She has written as critic for Times of India and Economic Times. She believes that art is a progressive sojourn. And there are those who are taught and those who are self taught. She herself had learnt by looking at the best shows in Washington D.C. and New York. And life is about learning and growing...

Critic and Curator Uma Nair has been writing for the past 29 years on art and culture She has written as critic for Times of India and Economic Times. She b. . .